Forum topic: Staff and Drivers Salaries

Hi!

Is it just me, or we are going to have a huge problem with salaries?
I'm already overstretched salary-wise, and it seems like everyone is demanding multiples of their previous salary.

Please share your thoughts.

Thanks,
Nelson

Hi Nelson,

I could not disagree more to be honest. Salaries are really low in general, and teams are making huge profits. What do you consider a lot?

I agree that some of the drivers/ staff do demand silly salaries, but i've found that if you offer the same amount or a bit more they are more inclined to accept unless someone else puts a bid in.

(sometimes they actually accept lower wages if you put higher performance clauses)

Hi Frank!

I agree that staff was cheap, allowing teams like mine to create huge war chests while reaming competitive. However, I now have my Coach asking me for 1.8 to 2.2 million. If I have two coaches like this, I have a huge part of my budget just for that.

I agree that this might be an extreme case, but it doesn't seem uncommon. Maybe other players might support or refute my assertion.

Hi Adam!

I will try that, but I rarely end up being alone negotiating with staff.

Nelson,

the point is the fact that teams shouldn't be able to have the best of the best for multiple or long term focus as the game has had it in the past number of seasons. The changes that Frank made now forces teams aka managers to decided on the area of focus around the points, budget and cash that teams currently have. So you need to decided if a commercial manager is worth their new highly demanded wages or risk finding a new cheaper manager that has less experienced until they demand stupid prices. Supply and demand meaning the more interest managers have in your manager the more likely they are going to be in a power position to ask a lot more money. You need to choose to pay or not.

This is multiplied by the fact that you can have a lot of staff now with Two main drivers, Junior drivers and a full academy. This means team in division 1 that currently have very strong junior staff members won't be able to afford them allowing these junior member to become available to for teams in lower division assisting in the growth of other teams from division 4 to division 1. This means more focus needs to be placed on scouting and finding new talent and developing them in your junior roles rather then signing as many high rated staff members to each role.

P.S. even looking at your teams staff members I can see that you have six designers that put my current designers to shame; which is the point above as they could easily lead another team as head so they have the right to demand huge wages to stay as Juniors or be released to be signed as head designers else where or Juniors if another D1 team decides they can afford that designer.

Hi Robert,

I do have a pretty good designer lot, but if you look at the rest of my organization, I'm pretty much understaffed. My focus is on having fast cars, therefore, I need great designers - that's my philosophy. As a consequence, I don't have a particularly good commercial department and the good sponsor spots are snatched away by other teams (this was particularly troubling in div 2). Additionally, I'm the only team in Div 1, with points, whose infrastructure is an HQ3 (I'm basically the Haas team here). It is what it is, and I do enjoy doing it this way, even if getting a Div1 title is close to impossible.

My point is even with this lean approach, I'm sensing that staff is becoming too expensive for me. Likely, I'll have to dial down and spend a couple of seasons trying to balance my staff expenses in some way. Likely, I'll have to just hire mediocre staff and deal with the lower competitiveness.

This could be cool if at least I could develop your staff, but there isn't a direct way to do it, I'll just have to get staff with low stats and high potential and expect them to improve over time.

I might be seeing things wrong, but it seems like the players, like me, will focus on getting designers and drivers (which IMO are the core of any team) and they'll neglect the other areas of the game. For instance, I'm tempted to let go of the Coaches and forget the youth system. I could understand an inflationary outburst in Designers and drivers, but Coaches and Scouts?

Just my thoughts and I don't intend to offend anyone with them. Obviously, these are not easy things to design in a game, and there are always players that are going to complain, this time it is me

Complaining or voicing an opinion? Different but the same due to perception!!

I agree with your area of focus in some ways I as the right way is too place focus on drivers and designers with Commercial, mechanics being after thoughts with scouts and coaches not really being required. I also agree an coach or scout asking $1M - 3M isn't going to happen at my team and is a bit unrealistic as the staff wages should be based around importance towards the teams success just like the develop cost indicate the actually importance of the part. Chassis being expensive while a fuel cell/tank being cheaper so maybe the suggestion that staff have different demands based on the area that they work is the suggestion?

Designers should maybe then cost a bit more then Commercial and mechanical while Scouts & Coaches should be cheap? What do you see as the right budget?

I think most team make between $7M - $9M per week or $91M - 117M per season so how do you see the breakdown of car development, testing, suppliers and Staff within this budget where teams break even rather then make a ton of cash?

Here is the basic overall view of the income an team could have:

Racing - Prize money 0 - 3,500,000
Commercial - Sponsors 7,000,000 - 9,000,000
- Fans 0,-
- Shares 0,-
Bank - Loan taken 0,-
- Investment 0,-
- Shareholder financial injection 0,-
TOTAL
Weekly Base: $7,000,000 - $12,500,000
Season Base: $91,000,000 - $162,500,000

Well, I agree with you on everything you said. But, instead of trying to get a budget archetype, I would mop the excess cash out of teams by inflating drivers first and designers next. Championship winners would become really expensive.

That would be close to reality. Great drivers cost close to 30M a season. Teams with great drivers would likely face expenditures of 50M (e.g. 30 M + 20M) per season. In 3 seasons 150M would be gone. That would make the driver management much more tactical. You would have to wait until you had a fast car to hire that championship driver. Or you could wait for that young promise in the youth system. Great teams would have to let go drivers after 2 or 3 seasons, in order to rebalance the budget. I think this is closer to reality. For instance, Renault thought that they could fight for the Championship and invested (more like they threw away ) 30M on Ricciardo. Because it didn't work out, they'll part ways, and Renault will focus on a leaner line-up.

I think the same should happen with designers on a lower scale. The Adrian Neweys of this life should be expensive. However, I think that junior staff working with top-level staff should evolve faster. I think this reflects the reality, in the sense that if a designer has the talent and potential, he will have to live up to that potential under a great chief-designer. On the other hand, in a mediocre environment, things should go slower (probably synergy and morale should also have some role here).

I think that the game is not far from what I just exposed. The main problem I see is that making Scouts, Coaches, and Commercials more expensive is making us choose between areas that I don't think we should have to choose. Even smaller teams might have a youth system or a cool marketing department.

Much of what I said is obviously debatable, but I think there is some merit in it. Sometimes you have an over-hyped driver costing loads of money, and some other team appears with a young driver and snatches the top spot. Two different approaches may offer more excitement and diversity to the game. By making rockstar drivers very expensive, you are making the alternative strategy (in-house talent breeding) more rewarding.

This is getting kinda long, and I might have derailed a bit, sorry for that.